Convert YAML to JSON without uploading the file

Converting configuration is a debugging move: one tool wants JSON and the repository holds YAML. The file being converted names internal hosts, bucket names, account identifiers and, more often than anyone admits in public, a password or an access key sitting in plain text three levels deep. Pasting it into a hosted converter is an infrastructure disclosure, and no redaction habit is as reliable as the file simply not going anywhere.

Comments do not survive, in either direction, because JSON has nowhere to put them. That matters more than it sounds: the comments in a config file carry the reasoning, including the line explaining why a limit is set low and must not be raised. Keep the YAML as the source of truth and treat any JSON you produce as output, never as something you edit and convert back.

Anchors and aliases expand when they are converted, so a compact YAML file with one shared block referenced in five places becomes a JSON file with five copies of that block. That is correct behaviour rather than a bug, but it makes the output longer than expected and it means editing one copy no longer edits the others.

Confirm the local claim by disconnecting the network and converting a real config file. It completes. That is also the moment to check whether the file you just handled has a credential in it, because if it has ever been pasted into anything hosted, the credential needs rotating regardless of who you think saw it.